"Don't be fooled by the concept of Artificial Intelligence (AI), because there is nothing artificial about it: AI is made by humans, designed to behave like humans, and intended to impact human lives. Stanford Professor of Computer Science Fei-Fei Li often insists on this idea to his students.
With that premise and after reading several articles such as those by Antonio Ortiz MedinaI set out to interrogate the world's most famous chatbot, ChatGPT, like Alan Turing dressed as Sherlock Holmes (easy to imagine Benedict Cumberbatch). After a few test questions, I decided to see how it could be useful in the field of communication and Public Relations.
From the outset, it proved to be far more advanced in its responses than any other assistant I had tried. So much so that, with a few bullet points of information, it managed to write a press release that, while not brilliant, was reasonably well understood.
But it happens that ChatGPT cannot yet draw up complete communication strategies (it can give general advice), nor align itself with other business or marketing plans, nor respond specifically to crisis situations. It is not yet, in short, a consultant that can completely solve the communication and branding challenges of companies: if it can do some tasks, they will be incomplete.
This is not a neo-luddite stance, but rather the opposite: it is about responsible use of tools. As the strategic consultancy firm Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in "The Rise of the AI-Powered Company in the Postcrisis World", even when AI is placed at the heart of organisations, it is crucial to avoid a "non-human" mentality. Indeed, our role must be elevated to ensure that there is no area where AI operates unchecked.
This is where the value of a senior communications consultancy comes in, one that is able to respond to any challenge and that uses whatever tools are necessary with sufficient judgement, including an AI made by people for people.
*Ricardo Cuevas is Account Director at PROA.